After avoiding planning for automatic defense budget cuts throughout the fall, the Department of Defense (DoD) now sees the cuts as probable, and is rapidly preparing, a senior Pentagon official said Feb. 6.

Speaking at the Cowen Aerospace and Defense Conference, Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said that despite the catastrophic nature of automatic cuts, they’re likely to happen.

“As we read the tea leaves right now, the odds of sequestration happening, at least getting implemented initially, hopefully not for very long, are reasonably high,” Kendall said. “My guess right now, and it’s just a guess, is that we’ll probably have to implement it for some time. But as the magnitude of the impact gets more and more evident, hopefully people will come to their senses and get down to a deal and get this over with.”